1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates in general to a method and apparatus for handling book trimmings and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for separating the glued portion of a book trimming from the unglued portion of a book trimming and collecting the two portions separately.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Many books, magazines, and other documents are bound together by gluing together the separate pages of paper along a common edge. These stacks of paper which make up the book, magazine or other document which have a glued edge which bind them together are then put through various types of trimming apparatus for the purpose of trimming off excess paper so that the book, magazine or other document will have straight edges and be the appropriate size. One example of a patented device which does trimming of this type is the three knife trimmer of the Rathert U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,427. The typical trimming that is trimmed from these bound books and stacks of paper is about 3/16" wide and as tall as the thickness of the book or magazine.
When the excess paper is trimmed from a book or magazine there is usually a cut made along three sides of the rectangular shape of the book or magazine. The side that is not cut of course is the side that is bound together by the glue or other means. Therefore essentially two types of book trimmings result. One book trimming is the excess paper that was cut from the edge opposite the bound edge of the book. This book trimming is excess paper and is easily collected and recycled. The other two trimmings are cut from the edges which are perpendicular to and adjacent to the glued bound edge. Therefore these book trimmings are glued together at one edge.
In modern glue binding a hot melt glue which is made of plastic is very often used. When this hot melt plastic is included in the portion of the trimmings previously described, these trimmings are not easily recycled because this hot melt glue plastic is not recyclable along with the rest of the paper. Therefore, a large portion of paper is wasted because it has to be thrown away because a portion of it contains this plastic hot melt glue. In the past when animal glue was more prevalently used these scraps of paper containing animal glue could be thrown in with the rest of the clean scraps of paper and be recycled because the animal glue is recyclable. However, the current use of the plastic hot melt glue means that these scraps of paper have to be thrown away and this constitutes a tremendous waste of good paper.
It would be a tremendous advantage to have a method or device which could take the glued book trimmings directly from the book trimming machines and cut off the glued portion and retain the unglued portion so that it could be recycled. In this way, paper that is now being wasted could be easily, efficiently and inexpensively accounted for and recycled. The present invention provides for such a method and apparatus for collecting from the book trimming machines these glued book trimmings and then cutting off the small glued portion and separating the unglued portion so that it can be collected and recycled.
The prior patented devices in the area of book trimming generally disclose devices for trimming books and do not disclose devices which would be suitable for the purpose of trimming the glued portion of the glued book trimming so as to save paper. In fact these prior art patented devices all would need a device as in the present invention so that the glued book trimming could be recycled more effectively. Examples of book trimming machines are in the following U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,300,427, issued to Rathert on Nov. 17, 1981; 4,188,845, issued to Stukenberg on Feb. 19, 1980; 3,841,182, issued to Cosgrove et al. on Oct. 15, 1974; 3,811,350, issued to Marciniak on May 21, 1974; 3,733,947, issued to Bryson et al. on May 22, 1973; 3,722,336 issued to Sarring on Mar. 27, 1973; 3,722,342, issued to Vulcano on Mar. 27, 1973; Re. 28,840, reissued to Sarring on June 8, 1976; 3,570,350, issued to Fogg on Mar. 16, 1971; 3,570,344, issued to Bryson on Mar. 16, 1971; 3,559,516, issued to Freeman on Feb. 2, 1971; and 3,528,332, issued to Thumim on Sept. 15, 1970.
None of these patents discloses a device for handling the glued book trimings so as to separate the glued portion and retain the unglued portion for recycling. Further, none of these devices is readily adaptable for this purpose. Therefore the present invention provides for a method and apparatus which can be used in conjunction with many of these devices to separate the small glued portion from the book trimmings and thus recycle a great deal of paper that has gone to waste in the past.